Earlier this month, IBM and Siebel were rumored to be planning to partner up to develop a hosting service for customer relationship management applications. Commentators have widely noted the similarities between the approach adopted by IBM and Siebel and that of Salesforce.com. With the increasing success of Salesforce.com's utility computing approach, it is tempting to interpret Siebel's revival of their (previously abandoned sales.com) "CRM on demand" model as a realization that their current model of service delivery is by no means future proof.

Such vitality in the CRM space, a previously over-hyped and tired segment of the software industry, is less surprising when viewed in the context of utility computing - as many of the different players begin to position themselves for the almighty sales effort that is to come.

Until now, corporations have been reluctant to sign deals with some of the innovative and smaller utility computing providers that have sprung up in the last two years but the recent trend of partnership and acquisitions is beginning to turn this tide.

IBM acquired Think Dynamics, a software company which enables companies to re-allocate processing power and storage and make it available to users "on demand." Sun has purchased both Terraspring and Pirus Networks. Terraspring operates in the same space as Think Dynamics and Pirus Networks specializes in storage virtualization - a key component of utility computing. Another important storage provider, Veritas, have also extended their portfolio by acquiring Jareva, which specializes in server resource allocation.

Frank Gillet of Forrester Research was recently quoted as saying that IBM needs to ensure delivery matches it vision, claiming that "today, IBM suffers from a complex, futuristic vision that has led it to neglect server provisioning." These recent adjustments to the utility computing landscape are important because they lay the framework for both user confidence and functionality.

As you will see in the first of our new series of articles detailing the utility computing model, this is an immature space which holds many surprises in store. We are at a formative point in the utility computing landscape and there is certainly a great deal more value to come the way of users in the next 9 months.